The Crime at Pickett's Mill

There is a class of events which by their very nature, and despite any
intrinsic interest that they may possess, are foredoomed to oblivion. They
are merged in the general story of those greater events of which they were
a part, as the thunder of a billow breaking on a distant beach is unnoted
in the continuous roar. To how many having knowledge of the battles of our
Civil War does the name Pickett's Mill suggest acts of heroism and devotion
performed in scenes of awful carnage to accomplish the impossible? Buried
in the official reports of the victors there are indeed imperfect accounts
of the engagement: the vanquished have not thought it expedient to relate
it. It is ignored by General Sherman in his memoirs, yet Sherman ordered
it. General Howard wrote an account of the campaign of which it was an
incident, and dismissed it in a single sentence; yet General Howard planned
it, and it was fought as an isolated and independent action under his eye.
Whether it was so trifling an affair as to justify this inattention let the
reader judge.

The fight occurred on the 27th of May, 1864, while the armies of Generals
Sherman and Johnston confronted each other near Dallas, Georgia, during the
memorable "Atlanta campaign." For three weeks we had been pushing the
Confederates southward, partly by maneuvering, partly by fighting, out of
Dalton, out of Resaca, through Adairsville, Kingston and Cassville. Each
army offered battle everywhere, but would accept it only on its own terms.
At Dallas Johnston made another stand and Sherman, facing the hostile line,
began his customary maneuvering for an advantage. General Wood's division
of Howard's corps occupied a position opposite the Confederate right.
Johnston finding himself on the 26th overlapped by Schofield, still farther
to Wood's left, retired his right (Polk) across a creek, whither we
followed him into the woods with a deal of desultory bickering, and at
nightfall had established the new lines at nearly a right angle with the
old--Schofield reaching well around and threatening the Confederate rear.

The civilian reader must not suppose when he reads accounts of military
operations in which relative position of the forces are defined, as in the
foregoing passages, that these were matters of general knowledge to those
engaged. Such statements are commonly made, even by those high in command,
in the light of later disclosures, such as the enemy's official reports. It
is seldom, indeed, that a subordinate officer knows anything about the
disposition of the enemy's forces--except that it is unamiable--or precisely
whom he is fighting. As to the rank and file, they can know nothing more of
the matter than the arms they carry. They hardly know what troops are upon
their own right or left the length of a regiment away. If it is a cloudy
day they are ignorant even of the points of the compass. It may be said,
generally, that a soldier's knowledge of what is going on about him is
coterminous with his official relation to it and his personal connection
with it; what is going on in front of him he does not know at all until he
learns it afterward.

At nine o'clock on the morning of the 27th Wood's division was withdrawn
and replaced by Stanley's. Supported by Johnston's division, it moved at
ten o'clock to the left, in the rear of Schofield, a distance of four miles
through a forest, and at two o'clock in the afternoon had reached a
position where General Howard believed himself free to move in behind the
enemy's forces and attack them in the rear, or at least, striking them in
the flank, crush his way along their line in the direction of its length,
throw them into confusion and prepare an easy victory for a supporting
attack in front. In selecting General Howard for this bold adventure
General Sherman was doubtless not unmindful of Chancellorsville, where
Stonewall Jackson had executed a similiar manoeuvre for Howard's
instruction. Experience is a normal school: it teaches how to teach.

There are some differences to be noted. At Chancellorsville it was Jackson
who attacked; at Pickett's Mill, Howard. At Chancellorsville it was Howard
who was assailed; at Pickett's Mill, Hood. The significance of the first
distinction is doubled by that of the second.

The attack, it was understood, was to be made in column of brigades,
Hazen's brigade of Wood's division leading. That such was at least Hazen's
understanding I learned from his own lips during the movement, as I was an
officer of his staff. But after a march of less than a mile an hour and a
further delay of three hours at the end of it to acquaint the enemy of our
intention to surprise him, our single shrunken brigade of fifteen hundred
men was sent forward without support to double up the army of General
Johnston. "We will put in Hazen and see what success he has." In the words
of General Wood to General Howard we were first apprised of the true nature
of the distinction about to be conferred upon us.

General W. B. Hazen, a born fighter, an educated soldier, after the war
Chief Signal Officer of the Army and now long dead, was the best hated man
that I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soul in
the service. His was a stormy life: he was in trouble all around. Grant,
Sherman, Sheridan and a countless multitude of the less eminent luckless
had the misfortune, at one time and another, to incur his disfavor, and he
tried to punish them all. He was always--after the war--the central figure of
a court martial or a Congressional inquiry, was accused of everything, from
stealing to cowardice, was banished to obscure posts, "jumped on" by the
press, traduced in public and in private, and always emerged triumphant.
While Signal Officer, he went up against the Secretary of War and put him
to the controversial sword. He convicted Sheridan of falsehood, Sherman of
barbarism, Grant of inefficiency. He was aggressive, arrogant, tyrannical,
honorable, truthful, courageous--a skillful soldier, a faithful friend and
one of the most exasperating of men. Duty was his religion, and like the
Moslem he proselyted with the sword. His missionary efforts were directed
chiefly against the spiritual darkness of his superiors in rank, though he
would turn aside from pursuit of his erring commander to set a
chicken-thieving orderly astride a wooden horse, with a heavy stone
attached to each foot. "Hazen," said a brother brigadier, "is a synonym of
insubordination." For my commander and my friend, my master in the art of
war, now unable to answer for himself, let this fact answer: when he heard
Wood say they would put him in and see what success he would have in
defeating an army--when he saw Howard assent--he uttered never a word, rode
to the head of his feeble brigade and patiently awaited the command to go.
Only by a look which I knew how to read did he betray his sense of the
criminal blunder.

The enemy had now had seven hours in which to learn of the movement and
prepare to meet it. General Johnston says:

"The Federal troops extended their intrenched line [we did not intrench] so
rapidly to their left that it was found necessary to transfer Cleburne's
division to Hardee's corps to our right, where it was formed on the
prolongation of Polk's line."

General Hood, commanding the enemy's right corps, says:

"On the morning of the 27th the enemy were known to be rapidly extending
their left, attempting to turn my right as they extended. Cleburne was
deployed to meet them, and at half-past five p. m., a very stubborn attack
was made on this division, extending to the right, where Major-General
Wheeler with his cavalry division was engaging them. The assault was
continued with great determination upon both Cleburne and Wheeler."

That, then, was the situation: a weak brigade of fifteen hundred men, with
masses of idle troops behind in the character of audience, waiting for the
word to march a quarter-mile uphill through almost impassable tangles of
underwood, along and across precipitous ravines, and attack breastworks
constructed at leisure and manned with two divisions of troops as good as
themselves. True, we did not know all this, but if any man on that ground
besides Wood and Howard expected a "walkover" his must have been a
singularly hopeful disposition. As topographical engineer it had been my
duty to make a hasty examination of the ground in front. In doing so I had
pushed far enough forward through the forest to hear distinctly the murmur
of the enemy awaiting us, and this had been duly reported; but from our
lines nothing could be heard but the wind among the trees and the songs of
birds. Some one said it was a pity to frighten them, but there would
necessarily be more or less noise. We laughed at that: men awaiting death
on the battlefield laugh easily, though not infectiously.

The brigade was formed in four battalions, two in front and two in rear.
This gave us a front of about two hundred yards. The right front battalion
was commanded by Colonel R. L. Kimberly of the 41st Ohio, the left by
Colonel O. H. Payne of the 124th Ohio, the rear battalions by Colonel J. C.
Foy, 23rd Kentucky, and Colonel W. W. Berry, 5th Kentucky--all brave and
skillful officers, tested by experience on many fields. The whole command
(known as the Second Brigade, Third Division, Fourth Corps) consisted of no
fewer than nine regiments, reduced by long service to an average of less
than two hundred men each. With full ranks and only the necessary details
for special duty we should have had some eight thousand rifles in line.

We moved forward. In less than one minute the trim battalions had become
simply a swarm of men struggling through the undergrowth of the forest,
pushing and crowding. The front was irregularly serrated, the strongest and
bravest in advance, the others following in fan-like formations, variable
and inconstant, ever defining themselves anew. For the first two hundred
yards our course lay along the left bank of a small creek in a deep ravine,
our left battalions sweeping along its steep slope. Then we came to the
fork of the ravine. A part of us crossed below, the rest above, passing
over both branches, the regiments inextricably intermingled, rendering all
military formation impossible. The color-bearers kept well to the front
with their flags, closely furled, aslant backward over their shoulders.
Displayed, they would have been torn to rags by the boughs of the trees.
Horses were all sent to the rear; the general and staff and all the field
officers toiled along on foot as best they could. "We shall halt and form
when we get out of this" said an aide-de-camp.

Suddenly there came a ringing rattle of musketry, the familiar hissing of
bullets, and before us the interspaces of the forest were all blue with
smoke. Hoarse, fierce yells broke out of a thousand throats. The forward
fringe of brave and hardy assailants was arrested in its mutable
extensions; the edge of our swarm grew dense and clearly defined as the
foremost halted, and the rest pressed forward to align themselves beside
them, all firing. The uproar was deafening; the air was sibilant with
streams and sheets of missiles. In the steady, unvarying roar of small-arms
the frequent shock of the cannon was rather felt than heard, but the gusts
of grape which they blew into that populous wood were audible enough,
screaming among the trees and cracking their stems and branches. We had, of
course, no artillery to reply.

Our brave color-bearers were now all in the forefront of battle in the
open, for the enemy had cleared a space in front of his breastworks. They
held the colors erect, shook out their glories, waved them forward and back
to keep them spread, for there was no wind. From where I stood, at the
right of the line--we had "halted and formed," indeed--I could see six of our
flags at one time. Occasionally one would go down, only to be instantly
lifted by other hands.

I must here quote again from General Johnston's account of this engagement,
for nothing could more truly indicate the resolute nature of the attack
than the Confederate belief that it was made by the whole Fourth Corps,
instead of one weak brigade:

"The Fourth Corps came on in deep order and assailed the Texans with great
vigor, receiving their close and accurate fire with the fortitude always
exhibited by General Sherman's troops in the actions of this campaign.... The
Federal troops approached within a few yards of the Confederates, but at
last were forced to give way by their storm of welldirected bullets, and
fell back to the shelter of a hollow near and behind them. They left
hundreds of corpses within twenty paces of the Confederate line. When the
United States troops paused in their advance within fifteen paces of the
Texas front rank one of their color-bearers planted his colors eight or ten
feet in front of his regiment, and was instantly shot dead. A soldier
sprang forward to his place and fell also as he grasped the color-staff. A
second and third followed successively, and each received death as speedily
as his predecessors. A fourth, however, seized and bore back the object of
soldierly devotion."

Such incidents have occurred in battle from time to time since men began to
venerate the symbols of their cause, but they are not commonly related by
the enemy. If General Johnston had known that his veteran divisions were
throwing their successive lines against fewer than fifteen hundred men his
glowing tribute to his enemy's valor could hardly have been more generously
expressed. I can attest the truth of his soldierly praise: I saw the
occurrence that he relates and regret that I am unable to recall even the
name of the regiment whose colors were so gallantly saved.

Early in my military experience I used to ask myself how it was that brave
troops could retreat while still their courage was high. As long as a man
is not disabled he can go forward; can it be anything but fear that makes
him stop and finally retire? Are there signs by which he can infallibly
know the struggle to be hopeless? In this engagement, as in others, my
doubts were answered as to the fact; the explanation is still obscure. In
many instances which have come under my observation, when hostile lines of
infantry engage at close range and the assailants afterward retire, there
was a "dead-line" beyond which no man advanced but to fall. Not a soul of
them ever reached the enemy's front to be bayoneted or captured. It was a
matter of the difference of three or four paces--too small a distance to
affect the accuracy of aim. In these affairs no aim is taken at individual
antagonists; the soldier delivers his fire at the thickest mass in his
front. The fire is, of course, as deadly at twenty paces as at fifteen; at
fifteen as at ten. Nevertheless, there is the "dead-line," with its
well-defined edge of corpses--those of the bravest. Where both lines are
fighting with-out cover--as in a charge met by a counter-charge--each has its
"dead-line," and between the two is a clear space--neutral ground, devoid of
dead, for the living cannot reach it to fall there.

I observed this phenomenon at Pickett's Mill. Standing at the right of the
line I had an unobstructed view of the narrow, open space across which the
two lines fought. It was dim with smoke, but not greatly obscured: the
smoke rose and spread in sheets among the branches of the trees. Most of
our men fought kneeling as they fired, many of them behind trees, stones
and whatever cover they could get, but there were considerable groups that
stood. Occasionally one of these groups, which had endured the storm of
missiles for moments without perceptible reduction, would push forward,
moved by a common despair, and wholly detach itself from the line. In a
second every man of the group would be down. There had been no visible
movement of the enemy, no audible change in the awful, even roar of the
firing--yet all were down. Frequently the dim figure of an individual
soldier would be seen to spring away from his comrades, advancing alone
toward that fateful interspace, with leveled bayonet. He got no farther
than the farthest of his predecessors. Of the "hundreds of corpses within
twenty paces of the Confederate line," I venture to say that a third were
within fifteen paces, and not one within ten.

It is the perception--perhaps unconscious--of this inexplicable phenomenon
that causes the still unharmed, still vigorous and still courageous soldier
to retire without having come into actual contact with his foe. He sees, or
feels, that he cannot. His bayonet is a useless weapon for slaughter; its
purpose is a moral one. Its mandate exhausted, he sheathes it and trusts to
the bullet. That failing, he retreats. He has done all that he could do
with such appliances as he has.

No command to fall back was given, none could have been heard. Man by man,
the survivors with-drew at will, sifting through the trees into the cover
of the ravines, among the wounded who could draw themselves back; among the
skulkers whom nothing could have dragged forward. The left of our short
line had fought at the corner of a cornfield, the fence along the right
side of which was parallel to the direction of our retreat. As the
disorganized groups fell back along this fence on the wooded side, they
were attacked by a flanking force of the enemy moving through the field in
a direction nearly parallel with what had been our front. This force, I
infer from General Johnston's account, consisted of the brigade of General
Lowry, or two Arkansas regiments under Colonel Baucum. I had been sent by
General Hazen to that point and arrived in time to witness this formidable
movement. But already our retreating men, in obedience to their officers,
their courage and their instinct of self-preservation, had formed along the
fence and opened fire. The apparently slight advantage of the imperfect
cover and the open range worked its customary miracle: the assault, a
singularly spiritless one, considering the advantages it promised and that
it was made by an organized and victorious force against a broken and
retreating one, was checked. The assailants actually retired, and if they
afterward renewed the movement they encountered none but our dead and
wounded.

The battle, as a battle, was at an end, but there was still some
slaughtering that it was possible to incur before nightfall; and as the
wreck of our brigade drifted back through the forest we met the brigade
(Gibson's) which, had the attack been made in column, as it should have
been, would have been but five minutes behind our heels, with another five
minutes behind its own. As it was, just forty-five minutes had elapsed,
during which the enemy had destroyed us and was now ready to perform the
same kindly office for our successors. Neither Gibson nor the brigade which
was sent to his "relief" as tardily as he to ours accomplished, or could
have hoped to accomplish, anything whatever. I did not note their
movements, having other duties, but Hazen in his "Narrative of Military
Service" says:

"I witnessed the attack of the two brigades following my own, and none of
these (troops) advanced nearer than one hundred yards of the enemy's works.
They went in at a run, and as organizations were broken in less than a
minute."

Nevertheless their losses were considerable, including several hundred
prisoners taken from a sheltered place whence they did not care to rise and
run. The entire loss was about fourteen hundred men, of whom nearly
one-half fell killed and wounded in Hazen's brigade in less than thirty
minutes of actual fighting.

General Johnston says:

"The Federal dead lying near our line were counted by many persons,
officers and soldiers. According to these counts there were seven hundred
of them."

This is obviously erroneous, though I have not the means at hand to
ascertain the true number. I remember that we were all astonished at the
uncommonly large proportion of dead to wounded--a consequence of the
uncommonly close range at which most of the fighting was done.

The action took its name from a waterpower mill near by. This was on a
branch of a stream having, I am sorry to say, the prosaic name of Pumpkin
Vine Creek. I have my own reasons for suggesting that the name of that
water-course be altered to Sunday-School Run.